We've written about how pizza stones can help you set the bottom of a pie crust (goodbye, soggy bottoms) or crisp up the underside of a ciabatta (see tip 2), but Shirley Corriher, a baker and food scientist whose practically-miraculous Touch of Grace Biscuits transform from a wet slosh to biscuits you'd mistake for clouds, relies on pizza stones for cake-baking, too. She calls heating a pizza stone in the oven one of "the basics" you need to know before baking a cake:

Place a heavy baking (pizza) stone on the low oven rack, then set the baking pan directly on the stone. The stone gives very even heat from the bottom so the batter can start cooking and rising before the heat from the top of the oven sets the batter and crusts the top.

Not only does a pizza stone provide an evenly hot baking surface, but it also retains heat—keeping the oven's temperature more stable—and acts as a diffuser, protecting your food from the hot spots flaming up from the underbelly below.

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There you have it: even cooking, a higher rise, and a reason to leave your pizza stone in the oven. In my apartment, my pizza stone has taken up permanent residence there—mostly because I'm lazy and because my kitchen is so small there's not enough space for even the flattest wheel to squeak by. But alas, a windfall benefit to my negligence.

A student of English, a lover of raisins, a user of comma splices. My spirit animal is an eggplant. I'm probably the person who picked all of the cookie dough out of the cookie dough ice cream. For that, I'm sorry.

I always have a pizza stone in my oven. I never remember to take it out so I am glad to know I can now bake directly on it with my cake pans. I do throw my biscuits directly on the stone. They rise immediately and cook in a shorter amount of time.

I'm definitely going to give this a try with our traditional Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie. It usually turns out fairly well, but a firmer bottom crust would make it even better. Thanks for the great tip, Sarah!